SpaceShipTwo to Glide Alone in the Fall?
Department:
Privatizing Spaceflight
Teaser:
The Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceship could make its first independent flight soon as this fall.
Source:
SPACE.com Download time: Jul 21 2010 8:05 AM ET
A private spaceship built to launch space tourists on suborbital joyrides could by flying on its own by this fall, SPACE.com has learned.
The SpaceShipTwo spacecraft VSS Enterprise, which the space tourism company Virgin Galactic has been flying on test flights attached to a huge mothership, could make its first drop flights over California's Mojave Desert for glide and landing tests.
"There's a reasonable possibility that we could see the first drop flight in the fall, but as always, everything is predicated on thoroughness and safety," Virgin Galactic's commercial director Stephen Attenborough told SPACE.com in an e-mail. "No corners will be cut in order to achieve arbitrary deadlines."…
See SPACE.com for links to further info.
